Trinity dashes past Frenship for Caprock title

George Watson

Saturday

Dec 31, 2011 at 8:24 PM

Playing its fifth game in 60 hours, it would have been really easy for Trinity Christian to come out with rubbery legs for the Boys Green Bracket title game of the Fibermax Caprock Classic Friday night.

But the Lions apparently know just one speed - all out.

TCHS raced out to a 13-0 lead on Frenship in the first half of the first quarter, then iced the game by halftime with a 17-2 second quarter en route to a 69-46 victory over the Tigers at the Rip Griffin Center.

"We came out and just played really well," said TCHS coach Jeremy McFerrin, who led the Lions (24-0) to their first Caprock championship. "It doesn't matter the score, we just try to go out and compete every possession and win every possession up and down the court, and that's our goal every game. It's part of our guys conditioning and they're in such good shape."

Frenship (15-3) did what it needed to do in holding tournament Most Valuable Player Parker Wentz to just 11 points. But it was the rest of the Lions that did the damage.

Beau Durham dominated on the inside with a game-high 20 points, and TCHS got nine apiece from Tanner Gregory, Dave Miller and Austin Ammons, including eight 3-pointers from the trio.

The Tigers stemmed the tide temporarily and trailed by just 10 at the end of the first quarter, but the Lions turned up the defensive intensity in the second quarter. They limited Frenship to just one bucket in the period, and that came late after TCHS had grown its lead to 27.

"Trinity's a great team and I thought they came out and played really well," said Frenship coach Jason Dear, who had the Tigers in the title game for the first time since 1999. "We spotted them 13 points before we scored, but I thought the second half we did a better job of pushing the ball and hitting some shots and settling down. But by that time the game had already been given away."

The Tigers made a run at the Lions in the third quarter with an 11-0 run that cut the TCHS lead to 51-33 with just more than a minute remaining in the period. Included in that run were a pair of 3-pointers from Lucas Schuster and another from Michael Grant.

But Trinity quickly pushed the lead back to more than 20 thanks to a Gregory 3-pointer. Frenship sliced the lead to 17 with a 6-0 run to start the fourth, but that was as close as the Tigers would get as Ammons, Wentz and Gregory hit treys to keep Frenship at bay.

"We're playing so fast that it just wears (teams) out, and in the third quarter we can just come out and put it away," McFerrin said. "I think it's real good being able to come out and play five games like we did (in the tournament)."